


The Birthday War

by miss-minnelli (sherlollyshipperalltheway)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlollyshipperalltheway/pseuds/miss-minnelli
Summary: Rose and James have been at each other's throats since he moved to London in year three and he had his birthday party on the same day as hers. On their shared sixteenth birthday, they find out that they're soulmates and are forced to reconsider their feelings for each other.Soulmates AU mixed with High School AU





	The Birthday War

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by several prompts from @doctorroseprompts on tumblr. Beta read by the lovely @madquerade on tumblr. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Rose Tyler had been sharing her birthday with stupid James Noble ever since he moved to London in year three. Up until then, she’d always had a party with all the kids from her class and almost everyone attended. (After all, Jackie made a mean chocolate cake.) 

But the year he came to her school, their parents scheduled their parties on the same day, and since everyone had gotten to know James over the year, some people chose to go to his party instead of hers. Most of those people were boys, except Jeanne Poisson, who had been disgustingly obsessed with boys already. Rose got most of the girls and Mickey Smith, who had lived next door to her since they were infants.

This war of the birthdays, as Jackie had dubbed it, continued for several more years and soon Rose and James were turning sixteen. Sixteen was an extremely important year: the year you got your soulmark. Your soulmark appeared on your forearm and it consisted of your soulmate’s first name and and ever changing number indicating how many metres or kilometres away one’s soulmate was at any given moment. 

Everyone’s soulmark appeared at exactly noon on the day of their sixteenth birthday, and Rose was very excited to receive hers and find out who her soulmate was. She knew it wasn’t Mickey because he’d turned sixteen two months ago and his soulmate was somebody named Martha who lived far away. She dreaded the thought that it might be Jimmy Stone, whose birthday was in June. That was unlikely, of course, because most people’s soulmates lived hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away. 

...

On Friday, April the twenty-seventh, Rose sat in history class willing the time to pass faster until 11:45 when the year ten lunch hour began. Finally, the bell rang and she and Shareen dashed to the cafeteria to to claim their favorite lunch table and save seats for Mickey, Adam, and Keisha.

After their whole crew arrived, Shareen began counting down the minutes loudly, watching the clock above the food line.

“Three minutes, Rose!” she cried.

Keisha squealed and even Mickey smiled a bit. Rose noticed Adam gazing over at her almost dreamily which she quickly decided she didn’t like. She silently hoped it wouldn’t be him. 

“Two minutes! Get ready!”

Rose glanced across the cafeteria to where James and his mates were seated. They were behaving in a similar fashion to Rose’s friends, especially Jack, who the whole school knew had gotten his soulmark in September, being older than most kids. Rose couldn’t help but notice that James looked a bit sad, and his usually great hair was drooping today. Over the years she’d noticed that he had gotten quite attractive since they were little kids, especially when he spiked up his hair, seemingly without gel.   _ Enough. This is not about how fit you may or may not find James Noble. He’s a wanker and you’re about to find true love. _

“Sixty seconds!”

Rose was distracted by a tingling sensation in her arm as her friends shouted a countdown of the remaining seconds until noon. She glanced down and saw that her soulmark had already begun appearing; perhaps the clock in the cafeteria was a bit off. 

_ J  _

She shivered.

But the next letter assured her that it wasn’t Jimmy.

_ A _

_ M _

By now her heart was racing and it wasn’t from excitement.

_ E _

There was no way.

_ S _

No way. It had to be someone else with the same name. Plenty of people were called James.

_ 20 metres _

Fuck.

Rose looked up and found that the boy whose name was on her arm was staring back at her in shock from exactly 20 metres away. This couldn’t be happening. He would never see her like that. And she didn’t fancy him, right?  _ Definitely not. _ She stood up from the table and bolted before her friends’ countdown ended, Ignoring their calls after her, she ran out into the hall and slammed her body against one of the lockers.

* * *

 

 

James Noble felt a mix between excitement and dread about getting his soulmark. He was excited because of course he was. Almost everyone couldn’t wait to find the person who was perfectly suited for them in every way. But he was dreading the moment because he was finally going to have to move on from his crush on Rose Tyler. There was no way the two of them were soulmates, after all, and he’d given up hope years ago that hers would be the name that appeared on his arm. 

It was a stupid crush, and she most definitely didn’t return the sentiment as was evident by her cold glares that were only ever directed at him, that and the Birthday War. The Birthday War was one of James’ biggest regrets, but now he couldn’t seem to be able to get himself out of it. At this point, it was just something the two of them did: having their birthday parties at the same time and forcing their friends to choose between them. 

The first year had been an accident. When he was turning nine, he hadn’t known that he had the same birthday as Rose and by the time he found out, it was too late for his parents to change the party reservation. 

The next year, he’d asked Rose if she’d prefer he had his party the weekend before their birthday so that they could attend each others’ celebrations, but she turned up her nose and told him she didn’t care what he did and she wouldn’t go to his party even if it was on another day.

That had made James an angry little fourth grader and so out of spite he asked his parents to hold his birthday party at the same time as Rose’s again that year. 

During the following years, James started to realize how pretty and smart and nice (to people besides him) Rose was and he developed a crush that just wouldn’t go away. Every year at the beginning of April he would try to get up the nerve to tell Rose he wanted to stop their war and would she maybe want to get chips with him, but year after year, Rose made a huge show of reminding practically the whole grade of their Birthday War and he lost any shred of confidence he’d started out with. 

This year, he’d decided it didn’t matter if they continued the Birthday War, because by the time their birthday parties came around they would both be matched with someone else and he didn’t really want to put salt into the wound by watching Rose get excited over another bloke. So he got Jack to figure out when Rose was throwing her sixteenth and scheduled a low-key guys night at the same time. 

When April twenty-seventh came, James had declared to himself that he was excited to receive his soulmark. Really, he was just forlorn and wished he could fake sick that day, but knew that Jack would call him out on it. 

Lunch arrived too quickly that day and soon his friends were counting down the minutes until noon. 

“Three minutes, buddy!” yelled Jack, much more loudly than necessary.  

James tried to spend his last few minutes with a blank arm optimistically. Perhaps he would get the name of someone who turned out to be wonderful.  _ Not as wonderful as Rose.  _ Maybe they would be a movie star or a professional musician someday.  _ It doesn't matter because it isn’t her. _

“Two minutes!”

He let himself look over at the table where Rose sat with her friends but looked away quickly when he saw that her gaze was moving toward his table. He didn’t want her to see his growing sadness.

“Sixty seconds, baby!” hollered Jack, right into James’ ear. 

He winced at Jack’s words, not just because of their volume, and silently wished that he would love the person whose name appeared on his arm.

Moments later, his arm started tingling and the first letter of a name revealed itself. Realizing that the cafeteria clock must be off, James tuned out the raucous countdown and focused on the letters.

_ R _

No, he couldn’t get excited. Tons of people had names that started with R.

_ O _

Robin, Rolland, Romeo, Roger, Ronnie, Rosalind.

_ S _

Could it be? It wasn’t that common of a name.

_ E _

Bloody hell, it was her name.

_ 20 metres _

He looked up and stared at her with a shocked expression. This couldn’t be real. How lucky was he? 

She caught his eye in the next moment and then she fled from the cafeteria. Fuck. Apparently she wasn’t open to the idea of being matched with him. In that moment, he made the split second decision to go after her, because she was his soulmate after all and instinctively he wanted to make her feel better.

He rushed out into the hallway just in time to see Rose hurl her body into a locker and ball up her fists. 

Fuck. Not so lucky after all.

* * *

 

“Jesus!” James yelled.

Great. Exactly the person she wanted to see.

“I know. Can you fucking believe it.”

James paused. “Uh, I more meant like, are you okay? You just hit that locker really hard. Do you think you need some ice?”

“What?” she exclaimed, snapping her head up to look at her soulmate. “No. I’m clearly fine,” she declared, wincing internally at the twinge in her back alerting her to a very intense bruise that would surely appear the next day.

He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “Just asking. Sorry.”

For ten seconds, Rose let her heart get the better of her as she realized just how compassionate James was, wanting to make sure she was alright even immediately after she insulted him.

_ No _ . She refused to be humiliated because James Noble wasn’t interested in her. She shook her head. “Listen. You can’t tell anyone about this,” she said, gesturing to her arm. “Tell people it’s somebody else. ‘Cause this is  _ not _ happening. I don’t care what gods are out there but I refuse to be your soulmate.” She spat out the last word, but missed the hurt look that passed over James’ face. 

“Fine. Yeah. I don’t want to be yours either,” he said coldly. 

Even though they were mimicking her own, his words hurt her slightly, but she didn’t let it show. “Good. That’s settled. Now get away from me while I think of the name of someone I might actually  _ like _ .”

James’ face went blank for a moment and she swore she almost saw his eyes water. The moment was gone so quickly that she thought she’d probably imagined it.

He shook his head and turned around. 

“Happy birthday, Rose,” he said quietly and by the time she realized that he’d spoken, he had disappeared down the hall.

* * *

 

Per Jack’s suggestion, James’ sixteenth birthday was what Jack called the “guy version” of a sleepover party. He had explained to James that this just meant James invited round his best mates and they played video games and ate pizza until they passed out from exhaustion on the sitting room floor. James didn’t think that sounded very far off from what girls did at their sleepovers, but he didn’t know because his older sister, Donna, would never tell him what she and her mates got up to during sleepovers. 

James hadn’t really been excited to have this party before, but now he was positively dreading it. Most of all, he was dreading hiding his soulmark from his friends and lying about the name on his arm. He hadn’t had any classes with his friends after lunch on Friday and he’d managed to avoid them after school as well. Until now. He dressed in several layers that Saturday to insure that no one would accidentally see her name, but he wasn’t really sure how to explain why he was hiding it. 

At about five pm, an hour before his party was to start, James finally thought of a plan. It would have been amusing if he was under different circumstances. 

Jack arrived at his house first with a six-pack of Monster energy drinks in each hand. “Happy birthday, man! Who the hell is the lucky person who got you as a soulmate?” he asked with a wink.

“Stop flirting, Jack,” James scolded playfully. “You’re going to make Ianto jealous.”

“Ah, there’s nothing wrong with a little flirting. Plus,  _ Ianto _ is over a thousand kilometres away, and you’re right here.”

James chuckled and shook his head at his flirtatious friend. “Whatever, let’s take these drinks to the kitchen.”

“Ahem...their name?”

Willing himself to make this convincing, James screwed up his face in disgust. “Ethel”

A loud guffaw came from behind Jack and as James saw Craig and Rory climbing up the stairs. “Ethel? Aw that sucks man,” said Rory.

Craig practically doubled over in laughter. “I bet she’s ancient!”

James rolled his eyes. Perfect. His friends were walking right into his lie. Maybe he would be able to pull this off.

At least, that’s what he thought, until Jack looked over at him with a quizzical eyebrow raise. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything and James hoped he wouldn’t. 

The party went just fine after that, with no one mentioning soulmates or anything, and to James’ great relief, no one mentioned his painfully obvious crush on Rose that he was “going to have to deal with now”.

The guys ate pizza with far too many toppings for James’ taste and each bloke had more than one Monster energy. Sometime during the second Harry Potter movie of the night, Jack nudged James and motioned toward the hallway. 

He sighed, knowing Jack wasn’t going to let this go any longer, and reluctantly got up to follow him out of the room. 

“So are you ready to tell me what your arm really says? Is it a dude? Cause you can talk to me, obviously. It’s totally normal, I promise.”

James was briefly overwhelmed with a warmth at how supportive his best mate was. But he went on to explain, “No, that’s not it. I just- It’s Rose, Jack. Fuck.”

He was met with a dropped jaw. “Oh my God of course it is! After all this time, wow that’s perfect.”

“Maybe if she felt the same way, it would be,” James muttered in response. “But she made me promise not to tell anyone about this. She’s hated me for like eight years, Jack. This will never work.”

Jack waved his hand. “No way. If you both get your heads out of your asses you’ll see that you’re clearly meant to be together.”

“Her head’s farther up her arse than mine is! Wait, that sounded weird. But she’s been the one who wouldn’t end this fucking war we’ve been having for eight fucking years.”

“But did you end it? Did you ever extend an olive branch?” He gave James a knowing look. 

“Whatever, Jack. I need some air.” 

James turned and headed down the stairs as Jack called, “Go talk to her! At least think about it.”

Finally outside, he kicked a stone down the sidewalk in frustration. Who was Jack to tell him to get his head out of his arse? Well, he was right about the olive branch. No matter how many times he’d thought about it, James had never made things right between them. In any case, he was still a little pissed off at Rose. She’d never patched things up either. And now she was his soulmate and she didn’t even want to talk to him. 

After ten minutes of fuming and walking, James found himself in front of Rose’s house. Apparently Jack had gotten into his subconscious.  

Already there, he figured he may as well say his piece to Rose and see what happened.

* * *

 

After the soulmate countdown and the scene she’d made running from the cafeteria, Rose thought about cancelling her birthday party altogether. She mentioned this to her mum on Saturday morning, but she was having none of it. 

“Rose, sweetie, you’ve got to have your party. It’s your sixteenth! That’s an important one, soulmate or not.”

Ah. Right. 

Rose had panicked when she’d gotten home from school the day before and told her mother that the reason she didn’t want to show her her arm was because it didn’t say anything at all. There were rare cases of people who didn’t have soulmates, so it was believable, so long as she kept her arm covered for the rest of her life. 

The party was going to be a sleepover with Keisha, Shareen, Amy, Lynda, and Clara, and she’d been planning on playing tons of goofy party games with all of her best friends (besides Mickey because she couldn’t invite him to a girls sleepover party), but now she figured she’d just put on a chick flick or two and eat a whole pint of ice cream. 

Her friends already knew something was wrong (re: the fleeing from the cafeteria), but she absolutely was not telling her them the truth about her stupid stupid soulmate. As much as she hated lying, Rose decided to continue with her story that she hadn’t gotten a soulmate at all. 

The girls arrived around dinner time and they ordered Chinese takeout. After Rose mentioned her “lack” of soulmate, no one brought it up again and they spent the evening trying to act normally and cheer up their friend. This made Rose feel guilty for deceiving them, but she couldn’t imagine having to tell them that she had a soulmate who hated her. 

Around nine, the doorbell rang. Rose didn’t think anything of it since her mum had said Howard might be coming over at some point, but she was surprised when Jackie called, “Rose, it’s for you!”

As she walked toward the door she wrinkled her nose, wondering who would show up at her flat this late on a Saturday.

Oh. Him.

She saw James standing just outside the door wringing his hands and blinking far more than necessary. 

“What do you want?” 

James finally made eye contact with her. “Can we go for a walk? I need to say something.”

Rose crossed her arms. “Whatever it is, you can say it right here in front of my mum.”

He raised his eyebrows and subtly gestured toward his forearm.

“Fine. Mum, we’ll be right back. Tell the girls to go ahead and start on the cake.”

She stepped outside the door and pulled it shut behind her. James led them down the stairs that went down from her flat. They walked in silence for a full, tense minute before James scuffed his foot on the ground and leaned up against the wall of a nearby building.. 

“So what do you want, James? I was trying to have my birthday party, and if I’m not mistaken, this is when your party is as well, isn’t it?” Rose finished with her hands on her hips. 

James looked up at a point in the sky above Rose’s head. “I’m mad at you.”

“Oh, really? This oughta be good. Go ahead then. Why on earth are _ you  _ mad at  _ me _ ? And what made you feel the need to come all the way over here to interrupt my party?”

“I’m mad at you,” he repeated. “I’m mad that you won’t give this a chance. We’re freaking soulmates and you wouldn’t even look at me after we found out.” His voice got quieter towards the end of his sentence.

She wasn’t in the mood to be quiet, however. Practically shouting, she responded, “And why would I do that, hmm? After eight years of fighting? Why would  _ you _ even want that?”

James started shouting again then too, “Because I fancy you, alright. I fucking fancy you, Rose Tyler, and I hate that I can’t even talk to you without you glaring at me or turning around and walking away or insulting me in front of all of our friends.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” He turned away from her, clearly embarrassed by his confession.

She stayed still, frozen to the spot. He fancied her? How could he fancy her? Didn’t he hate her? Just like she hated him?

There was a pang in her chest. But she didn’t hate him. Not really. 

She kind of had at first, but she had been eight. What could you expect she would feel about the new boy who commandeered her birthday party? But later she’d kind of wanted to be his friend. She’d heard through mutual friends that they had similar tastes in movies and music, and he was always quite funny in class. Not to mention how handsome he’d gotten in the past few years. Fuck it. 

“I...don’t hate you,” she said hesitantly. 

James slowly turned around, the heartbreak evident on his face. “It’s fine, Rose. Don’t even bother. I’ll go. You clearly don’t want me as your soulmate.”

Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes. “I’m- I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. I wasn’t finished. Oh, God.” She couldn’t stop a stray tear from escaping her eye so she shut them both in defeat. 

“Wait. Don’t cry.”

Suddenly, James was right next to her and he was wiping away her tears. His hands were warm and she just wanted to feel them in her own.

“Rose, I- I shouldn’t have- That just uh, not really what I was hoping to hear after I told you that I, um, have a massive crush on you.”

She smiled slightly through her tears. “Oh, it’s massive, is it?”

“Colossal. Enormous. Earth-shatteringly large,” he smiled back at her, taking her hand in his, “Rose, I’m sorry I never stopped our stupid war. I wish more than anything that I had.”

Opening her eyes, Rose squeezed his hand in return. “I’m sorry too. I wish I’d ended it years ago. Have ever since you started doing your hair like that,” she said with a damp wink. “Because I also think that I might uh...fancy you too.”

Moments later, James’ mouth was millimetres away from hers. “That’s good. Because I’d really like to kiss you now.”

Rose let out a tiny breath. “Please do.”

Then his mouth was on hers and it was so soft and sweet and she wondered how she’d gone eight whole years of knowing him without ever even holding his hand, let alone kissing him.

Too soon he broke the kiss, but the thousand watt expression on his face stopped her from protesting. 

He bounced up and down on his toes. “Rose. Rose, are your friends still over at your house?”

“Yeah,” she replied, remembering her guilt for lying to them, but trying not to let it sour the moment. 

“Well, my mates are over at my place too. What if all of you came round to mine and we had a proper birthday party together. The first of many to make up for all the ones we wasted being stubborn.”

Rose realized in that moment just how much she fancied James Noble. (It was a lot.) “That’s perfect, James. I would love that. Plus, maybe if they’re all distracted by each other, we could do a little more of that kissing thing?”

“Oh, Rose Tyler. Definitely.”

And then he tugged on her hand, jutted his head in the direction of her flat, and whispered, “Run!”


End file.
